Trilby by Diana Palmer Page B

speak any French?”
    “Just a little,” she said. “Mama is fluent.” She searched his dark eyes. “Do you?”
    “I speak Spanish fluently,” he said. “And a smattering of German.”
    He didn’t look away, and neither did she. For moments that stretched with sweet tension, he looked down at her. Her lips parted as her heart began to race. He had the most decadent effect on her, she thought.
    His dark eyes dropped, as no gentleman’s would, to her bosom. She caught her breath.
    “Limits,” he murmured. “You Eastern women can’t live without them. Out here, a man sees something he wants and he just takes it.”
    “Including women?” she asked huskily.
    “It depends on the woman,” he replied. “My wife was like you, Trilby,” he added bitterly. “A hothouse orchid transplanted into hot, sandy soil. She hated it, hated me. She should never have married me. She wouldn’t have,” he added, with a cynical smile, “but she did like my money.”
    The thought irritated him. He didn’t like remembering Sally. Trilby brought it all back.
    “You…loved her?” she asked.
    “Yes,” he said harshly. “I loved her. But she wanted poetry and roses every morning and maids to wait on her. She wanted a gentleman to escort her to social functions. She hated my roughness, hated the loneliness. She grew to hate me. Everything about me,” he added, averting his eyes. “I don’t need telling that I’m a savage. Sally told me twice a day.”
    Incredible that she should pity him, she thought, watching his rigid features grow even harder. How terrible, to love someone who hated you…
    He looked down and caught her compassionate stare. It made him furious that she should feel sorry for him. It made him more furious that he’d begun to like her, to enjoy her company. She was a tramp, and he was letting himself be drawn into her sticky web. He was a fool!
    He threw the cigarette down in the dirt and reached for her.
    “I don’t need your pity,” he said curtly, staring at her mouth. “Not when you’re more contemptible than I’ll ever be!”
    His mouth bit into hers, twisting, hurting her. She gasped and tried to fight him, but he was much too strong. His arms were like vises, his mouth tasting of tobacco and pure man. He used his body like a weapon to humiliate her. His lean hands slid quickly to her hips and ground them against his thighs.
    The intimacy was staggering to a woman who’d barely been kissed before. Her body seemed to flush all over at the shock of feeling the changed contours of his body against her stomach. She cried out, furiously outraged and embarrassed by the unspeakable liberties he was taking, beating at him with her fists and trying to kick him.
    Surprised at her show of fury, he let her go. She stood glaring at him with a red face, her hair escaping from its tidy bun, her gray eyes blazing. She reached up and struck him across the mouth as hard as she could.
    “You savage!” she cried, shaking all over. “I knew…you were…no gentleman!” she raged.
    “And you’re no lady, you Louisiana tramp,” he said, without flinching from the blow. His eyes were like death as he looked at her. “If I were a little less civilized than I am, I’d throw you down in the dusty road and ravish you where you lay.”
    Her face went even redder. Her mouth trembled, tears formed in her eyes at the blatant insult. To think that dear, courtly Richard had never done more than touch her hand, and this savage had—had…
    “You lay one hand…on me…and I’ll hit you with a tree limb! How…dare you?” she choked, almost sobbing with rage. “I shall…tell my father!”
    “Do that,” he replied calmly, “and I’ll tell him about the affair you’re having with my married cousin!”
    She stared at him as if he’d gone mad. “What are you talking about?”
    “It’s too late to lie about it,” he told her, his voice cold with contempt. “Sally saw you and Curt kissing each other. She told